Writers Die

One of the problems with loving to read is that eventually you form an attachment to a particular writer. Often this attachment begins with a character, an intriguing plot, or maybe a setting, but the result for the reader is the same: a hunger to devour, to follow the adventures and with each page the attachment gets stronger until,

"Finishing a good book, is like leaving* a good friend"
- William Feather

But what happens when in the midst of that friendship if the author dies?

Unfortunately, one fo two things tends to happen,

1. The torch is passed to some other writer, which is fine in the case of something like Thieves World, but in most it provides for a, while not always inferior product, none the less one that deviates from the comfort of attachment. Much like any who tried to follow Sean Connery**, the characters are slightly changed and the fabric of the spell that was weaved is pulled in directions that just fail to ring true of the original work. Or,

2. The work remains unfinished, a trilogy, for often they are such, that just ends, the characters lives left hanging and on which with a final period, we the reader are left in limbo our imaginations so carefully strung along the path of plot find no recourse, no solutions and rather are left to wonder, to tire, and then to drift to other works and other weavers of words.

I am not sure which is the worse fate for the story whose teller dies. To be picked up for what is often financial gain rather than from any sense of noble completion or to be discarded, destined for, if lucky, cheap reprints, but more likely to fade into a cornered obscurity of word only visited by those whose interest lies in the genre of ilk.

* Often misquoted as losing.
** Until maybe Daniel Craig, though I did also like Timothy Dalton's more literary correct interpretation